State lawmakers want to restrict votes on local sales taxes and make passage harder. (Jacob Langston / Orlando Sentinel)

Leave it to the state House to take a bad Senate idea and make it worse.

Some state senators want to dictate when local governments can hold elections that involve raising a county’s sales tax.

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The cause for their alarm is directly tied to the fact that residents in a dozen counties last year exercised self-determination and voted to increase sales taxes to pay for schools, roads and other projects.

These taxes, imposed by local residents on themselves through a fair and democratic process, so offended anti-tax sensibilities that Sen. Jeff Brandes filed a bill (SB 336) that mandates when counties may hold such elections.

Henceforth, the senator says, counties shall seek the will of voters on sales taxes only during general elections when ballots are jammed with high-profile races, which is especially true every four years when the race for president sucks every bit of oxygen out of the room.

Not to be outdone, the House has countered with a bill (CS/HB 5) that not only dictates when local sales tax referendums are held but what constitutes approval — two-thirds of the vote rather than a simple majority.

That means just three of the 12 countywide sales tax votes held last year would have passed.

Too bad, Broward, where 59.9 percent of those who voted in November said yes to a new penny sales tax for roads, light rail and better bus service.

Tough stuff, St. Lucie, where 55.8 percent of voters in November approved a half-penny tax to, among other things, clean up its barf-green waterways (thanks in part to the state’s environmental neglect, by the way).

Take a hike, Hillsborough, where 57.3 percent of voters OK’d a new sales tax for transportation and 56.4 percent approved a separate half-penny for new schools.

Voters in those counties spoke. They decided their communities had a need and decided to pay for those needs themselves.

Now the state Legislature is trying to silence the majority because it didn’t like the outcome.

The irony is that if lawmakers succeed in quashing local sales tax votes, local governments might turn more often to voters for property tax increases, where the state has less constitutional clout.

In some counties out-of-towners pay a significant portion of sales taxes. In Orange County visitors pay about 50 percent of all the sales tax money collected.

But even with property taxes, results from last year’s elections showed Floridians are perfectly willing to pony up that way when their community needs money for big-ticket projects.

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This is so typical of the Legislature, which likes to swat flies with sledgehammers.

If the state’s beef is with cities that hold special elections designed for low voter turnout, then deal with that.

Osceola County, for example, is holding a special election in May for voters to decide on a sales tax increase for transportation. You can formulate a legitimate argument that the expense of a special countywide election with just one question, and the resulting likelihood of a low turnout, is an attempt to manipulate the outcome.

We’re not very sympathetic to that point of view. Nothing — except apathy — prevents someone from voting in a special election.

But OK, if that’s the problem then mandate that sales tax referendums have to be held during a regular election, whether it’s a primary or a general election.

If a primary election is good enough for political parties to select their candidates it ought to be good enough for counties to ask voters to decide on a tax question. (Try to think of the last time a winning political candidate complained that low turnout compromised their legitimacy as a candidate.) And let the majority rule in these questions rather than assigning power to a minority of voters.

City and county leaders across Florida should be storming the Capitol to halt the state’s relentless attempts to usurp the power of local government. And in this case, to undermine their democratic prerogative to let the people decide.